


Blackwing

by ThePlatinumAge



Series: Star Wars - The Road to Legacy [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Death Troopers - Joe Schreiber
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:22:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27330394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThePlatinumAge/pseuds/ThePlatinumAge
Summary: War requires experiments, experiments sometimes breed results, sometimes unimaginable horrors.
Series: Star Wars - The Road to Legacy [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1733191
Comments: 4
Kudos: 4





	1. Report

**Author's Note:**

> This short story was originally meant to be a flashback part in my "Darkness Awakens" story but I decided instead that it was better suited for its own brief one-shot, especially given the timing of the upload (and yes, it's a day late, but I hope it doesn't ruin the Halloween feeling for you).

**Imperial Bioweapon I-17A** , **Project Blackwing** report.

  
Written and admitted by: _**Col. Gallius Rax**_.

Location: Imperial Research Station, **REDACTED** system.

Date: **REDACTED**

Status: _**Semi-redacted**_

Security clearance required for the full report: _**12**_

Entry 1: As the Emperor commanded, my men began their secret mission of scouring planets and locations in close relations to the **REDACTED** in search of any artifacts or texts. One such expedition led to the Outer Rim planet of **~~Odacer-Faustin~~** , rumored to have once been home to a **REDACTED** academy.  
As the ship neared the planet, probe droids picked something up. A corpse, floating in orbit around the planet.

**REDACTED**

Entry 4: Once the corpse's identity had been ascertained, the proper thawing of it began. Not long after it had been thawed out, it miraculously sprang to life and attacked a nearby Stormtrooper, sinking its teeth into his arm. Guess those plastoid armors are good for something, at least, as the creature's teeth cracked the armor but couldn't penetrate it. It was then blasted with a stun bolt, though to little effect. In the end, a KX security droid stepped in and forcefully restrained the corpse as it was tied down to a slab, though not before it managed to take a rather large bite out of the bicep of a nearby lab assistant.

**REDACTED**

Entry 7: Of the three infected by the corpse, two are confined in isolation cells, having finally stopped scratching at the durasteel doors. The third one's head was caved in by a security droid after he'd succumbed to his injuries and reanimated, attempting to attack another Stormtrooper. The KX droids have been programmed with a scanner to detect hints of the virus and have been instructed to bludgeon or behead any infected seen outside isolation cells.

Entry 8: The reanimated zombies show a remarkable resiliency and strength, even managing to put a dent in durasteel, though at a personal cost to their own bodies' fragility. It would seem that short of full disintegration or incineration, the only ways to properly kill them is to electrocute them or remove all cognitive functions by destroying or removing the brain altogether (partial destruction of the brain is not always effective, as some subjects have been shown to reanimate despite missing half of their face and an entire hemisphere of the brain), as the virus seems to attach itself to and influence the nervous system and the motor functions through the brain. (side note, do not let them scream at each other, besides being extremely irritating they also seem to communicate new skills they've learned to each other, something they continually try to use against you)

Entry 9: **REDACTED** has isolated and reverse-engineered the virus. Its potential as a bioweapon is being considered.

Entry 12: Lord Vader is due to arrive soon to inspect the project for himself. I hope he finds it to his liking and decides not to pull the funding, as I personally believe Project **Blackwing** is worth the risks.

Entry 14: The _Vector_ has been loaded with canisters and is en route to their scheduled destination. As **REDACTED** ordered, **REDACTED** has sabotaged **REDACTED** and **REDACTED**. The experiment is now underway.


	2. The Visit

_Imperial Research Station on Jakku, 1 BBY._

The garrison hurried out to the landing pad as the shuttle made its descent. Colonel Gallius Rax stepped out of the base as the boarding ramp descended and the armored, black-clad figure stepped out. There was an aura of power around him, but Rax paid it no mind. The visitor didn't scare him, he'd spent enough time with the Emperor himself to fear his attack dog, no matter how true his reputation may be.

"Welcome, Lord Vader. I hope the trip was enjoyable," Rax said with a mocking smirk.

To their credit, none of the Stormtroopers gathered broke their composure, though they were all probably wondering why Vader hadn't simply run Rax through with his lightsaber already or snapped his neck with a gesture like he usually did when someone so much as looked at him in the wrong way.

"I was informed you had something to show me, Colonel," Vader said as he stepped by Rax, who simply nodded.

"This way, Lord Vader."

They made their way into the base and into a large technological lab. Off to the sides in secure quarantined chambers, red and black canisters were being sealed tight and moved around by droids. Rax led Vader past all that and into a security monitoring room.

"Gentlemen," Rax said as all the workers hurriedly stopped what they were doing and saluted Vader, "we have a guest with us today. Put on a good show for him."

The technicians nodded and immediately brought up a 3-D holoimage of what appeared to be a mutilated corpse. Despite the rot and multiple other lacerations the corpse had apparently endured, it appeared to be a young human male, probably in his late teens or early twenties. He had red hair tied back in a single long braid and wore a black tunic similar to that of a Jedi.

 _No, not a Jedi,_ Vader realized. _A Sith._

"Lord Vader," Rax said with a sly smirk, "meet Patient Zero."

"Where was he found?" Vader asked, betraying none of his surprise in his voice. The style of the tunic and his overall appearance suggested he was a Sith apprentice. But how could his body have been so well preserved overall?

"A few thousand kilometers from the orbit of Odacer-Faustin. About two months ago."

Odacer-Faustin? Hadn't there been a Sith Academy there once? But that meant the corpse was at least three thousand years old. Could the vacuum of space have preserved the body? That was when Vader noticed the chains around it.

-"What are the restraints for?"

-"To prevent him from escaping, of course."

Rax said it so nonchalantly, so seriously. Surely he knew Vader wasn't one for jokes.

Then one of the technicians pressed a button and a slab of bloody meat was dropped into the room with the corpse. Its eyes darted around, following the slab's movements as it dropped to the floor, and the corpse began to hungrily and angrily struggle against its restraints. Vader watched the silent holo-recording in silent contemplation. He'd heard rumors about an ancient ritual that Darth Drear, the founder of the Odacer-Faustin Academy, had created. A ritual to achieve immortality. Rather than grant immortality, however, it merely turned people into cannibalistic abominations that were very hard to kill. It would seem there might be some truth to those rumors.

"We've isolated the cause of the transformation. It's a virus. A sentient virus," a man said as he stepped into the room. "We've been calling it Blackwing."

Rax smirked as he glanced over at the man and nodded before turning to Vader. "This is Dr Isen. Our head of research."

Vader knew Isen's reputation. Alderaanian, despised by his peers for his lack of care for human life. A textbook sociopath, which suited the Emperor's top secret research station on Jakku just fine.

"We've reverse-engineered the virus and we believe we may have developed a rather potent bio-weapon," Isen went on as he brought up a holo-recording of several test subjects that had been injected with the virus.

"While the intervals between infection and first symptoms differ from person to person, the results are usually the same. The host suffers from hallucinations and becomes delirious as the flesh becomes necrotic and begins to rot. Some hosts have even claimed they've heard Blackwing talk to them. They begin to cough and some suffer nausea and extreme fever. We've noted that incubation and symptoms differ from species to species. The result is always the same. The host dies, only for the corpse to reanimate after a given amount of time. Sometimes it lays dormant for days until reanimation. Usually, it's the smell of blood or flesh that wakes the zombie up."

Isen stopped to take a breath and then smirked. "We've noticed that after a while, the zombies seem to learn, the longer we keep them alive the closer they get to completing complicated tasks, including finding weaknesses in their restraints or lulling guards into a false sense of security. We believe that the virus works on quorum sensing. It needs to spread rapidly but only becomes active when it's spread far enough. That's why the virus won't show up on scanners until it's already overwhelmed the host body. We believe that same quorum sensing is what enables them to learn, which is why we keep our few surviving test subjects separate because we don't dare test out our theory in such an unsafe environment. But if we could test it out somehow..."

Vader noticed that the Sith student corpse on the first holo-screen had thrown its head back, its mouth wide open. The muscles in its neck seemed to be working overtime, though it barely showed on the small holo-image. It was screaming.

"Is there audio?" Vader asked and Rax shook his head.

"Trust me, Lord Vader, you're better off without it. But we believe this is how they learn from one another. They communicate via screaming. Which is why we keep them separate in sound-proof cells, so they can't help each other escape."

Dr Isen smirked as he brought up yet another holo-image, this time a molecular scan of the virus. "We've managed to create an airborne version of the virus with very interesting results. Its incubation is usually far slower than the direct injection. However, the length of the hosts' deaths seems to depend entirely on the number of living people in the room. It is as if the virus actively seeks to kill everyone it comes into contact with and only when everyone in the vicinity has died from infection does it reanimate the hosts in order to seek out its next targets. We've also noted that a surprising amount of individuals seems to have some sort of genetic immunity to the airborne strain and from those immune, we've developed an antivirus that can inoculate against the airborne strain. However, those immune to the airborne strain are still vulnerable to the direct infection such as a bite or contact between a host's mucus membrane and infected blood or saliva."

"It's a perfect weapon of mass destruction that would negate the need for sieges of well-defended enemy worlds. The Rebellion wouldn't stand a chance," Rax said, his silky smooth voice betraying a hint of excitement.

"If the infected can learn, what's there to stop them from spreading off-planet? We could have a galaxy-wide plague on our hands," Vader countered, but Isen shook his head with a soft chuckle.

"We've seen to that. The zombies need to stay close to the liquid source of the virus. If they go beyond ten kilometers away from the Blackwing sources, their bodies fall apart as the virus loses hold over them. In that way, they're not much different from the old Separatist battle droids. Of course, their bodies do produce the Blackwing liquid, but only when they are within close proximity of the source and it takes the liquid their bodies produce days to reach full potency."

Vader stayed silent for a moment, contemplating it. Finally, he decided to speak up. "What would you require for a proper test?"

Rax beamed with satisfaction and smirked. "Oh, an isolated but large enough area that we can fully monitor and control. Preferably a ship. A Star Destroyer, maybe."

And so, Vader and Rax decided what to do. A batch of canisters were to be transported to Meglumine where they would then be sabotaged before being delivered onto a Star Destroyer. The Imperial Star Destroyer _Vector_ , an old and expendable ISD-I class ship, had already been picked out and ordered to carry the batch to Khonji VII. It would never reach its destination, of course. The virus would spread and take over the crew one by one while Rax monitored everything.

Afterwards, once the test had run its course for long enough and an Imperial prison barge had been unexpectedly caught up in the whole ordeal, Rax had remotely activated the Vector's self destruct mechanism and the confused zombies had no way to prevent their destruction.

In the end, the results had proven too gruesome and chaotic to Vader and the Emperor's liking, something Rax found most surprising. Then again, the use of Blackwing was pointless when the Death Star would strike just as much fear but to a far larger effect with a far lesser risk of a galaxy-wide pandemic.

Still, Rax held onto his research just in case. After all, there might be something to the 'immortality' rumors. Some subjects had managed to stave off the rotting side-effects and months after infection, their bestial hunger and behavior had receded. More interestingly, they'd retained some mild variation of their original identities but lacked all personality and memories. They seemed confused, as if they lacked purpose. Evidently, eating and killing wasn't enough anymore. They needed to serve. And so they would.

Imperial bioweapon I-17A might not be something the Empire would ever deem necessary, the risks were too great, but a successful Idiot's Array required the risky use of the otherwise valueless Idiot card. And after all, wasn't war just another way of playing Sabacc?


End file.
